A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

SECT. X.

Why Original Sin is called Concupiscence or Lust.

Why Original Sinne is called Concupiscence or Lust.

These things thus premised, to understand this Truth, viz. That original sin is habitual lust. Let us in the next place consider, why we call it so. And First, It may well be called concupiscence or lust, Because the appetitive and active powers of the soul are chief in a man, and they being corrupted and polluted, it's no wonder if the whole man be •urried headlong to hell. The Schoolmen make it a Question, Why original sin should not be called ignorantia, as well as concupiscentia? But first, We may call it ignorance also; It's ignorance and blindness in the apprehensive powers of the soul, but lust and concupiscence in the appetitive; especially the will being horribly corrupted, which is said to be the appetitus universalis, and is to all other inferior parts of the soul, as the primum mobile, to the other orbs, which carrieth all about with its motion; It's no wonder that it be called lust, as infecting and perverting the will, which is the whole of a man; for if a man know evil, yet if he do not will it, it is no sin; God himself knoweth all the sin that is committed in the world, and there is difference between Cogitatio mali, the thought about evil, and cogitatio mala, an evil thought; but the will cannot be carried out to evil, but presently it is an evil will. The understanding by knowing evil is not polluted, but the will is by willing of it, because the understanding receiveth the object intentionally into it self, and so is abstracted from its existency; but the will that goeth to the object in it self, and as it doth really exist, but this occasionally only. Original sin may well be called lust, because the acting and working parts of the soul, whereof the will is the supreme and chief, being polluted by it, the vigour and efficacy of it is most discovered by them, and this is that which makes grace so admirable and wonderful, that it can bind the strong ones of the soul, yea that it can turn sinful lustings into glorious, heavenly and holy lustings; Thus it is marvellous in the eyes of the godly.